Add Text to PDF

How to use the add text to pdf

1. Choose a PDF and type the text to add.
2. Set the font, size, colour and where on the page it should sit.
3. Choose which pages, then download the result.

About this tool

This writes text onto pages of a PDF that already exists: a reference number across a batch of invoices, a note on a drawing, a label on every page of a report. The position is set once by anchor and applied to every page you select, which is the difference between this and typing into a viewer one page at a time.

The fonts offered are the ones built into the PDF standard — Helvetica, Times and Courier. They need no embedding, so the file grows by almost nothing and opens identically everywhere. A font that has to be embedded adds hundreds of kilobytes and brings licensing questions with it, which is a poor trade for a line of text.

Positions are percentages of the page rather than fixed points, so one setting lands correctly on A4 and on US Letter. PDF measures from the bottom-left corner upwards, the opposite of every screen coordinate system, which is why a naive implementation puts a header at the foot of the page — the conversion is done in one place and tested against all nine anchor positions.

One limitation worth stating: this adds text as new page content, so it is not editable text in the original sense and it does not reflow anything already there. It sits on top. Where text needs to become part of a form, the form field is the right mechanism, and that is a different tool.

Common uses

• Stamping a reference number onto every page of a document.
• Adding a short note to a drawing or a scan.
• Labelling a batch of pages before sending them on.

Frequently asked questions

Can I edit the text that is already in the PDF?

No. This adds new content on top of the page. Editing existing text means rewriting the content stream and usually the font it depends on, which is a different and much larger job.

Why only these fonts?

Helvetica, Times and Courier are built into the PDF standard, so they need no embedding, add almost nothing to the file size and render identically in every viewer.

Is my document uploaded?

No. The PDF is opened and rewritten in this browser tab using pdf-lib, and nothing is sent anywhere.